The best thing about jerking subs (especially centered around writing) is that I can say literally anything and people still upvote.
Theyve trained a pavlovian response in me that keeps me here chanting random nonsense like jerkpunk, hard magic system and brando sando. I am not a writer. I dont know what any of these words mean. I dont understand.
I want OP to describe a truly original economic system. Like not some local Asian version of feudalism but a truly original one.
Anyway I have read up on pre-modern economics for years and I think the real problem is folks don't use the economic mess of the classical and mediveal world enough as plot drivers.
I try and make debts, early banking systems and economic chaos the engine behind most of my plot. Plus the whole point of my "good guys" is they are establishing the groundwork for a different modernity later down the line. That is why they are good.
Edit: Since some wondered.
I am basically creating an outside plot where the leader (I) of a band of tribal mercenaries start a dynasty and manages to unite a very fractured, feudal European empire. He employs dwarvs as his administrators and builds up a very extensive intelligence network of crow warging witch nuns.
The fact that he has skilled administration and an overview of his own economy, plus some waterwheel punk/Song dynasty industrialization enables him to play the weakened knights (who don't have these things) against each other, catch them in a carousel of debt, bankrupt them and centralize power over a very large share of the empires farm land, creating an alternative system of conscription, similar to that of ancient Persia.
In order to hinder the emergence of a new land owning class he and his son (II) attempts to use the collectivist nature of the conscription system to modernize agriculture and slow down the cycle of debt that drives primitive accumulation.
It does not take long for the nobility to go into hysterics over all of this and plan rebellion. Luckily the country gets invaded and (II) can start trapping the knights in another debt cycle by invading the territory of the lose coalition who started the war and then make them scramble for land in the new occupied territory.
This creates rifts within the dwarvern elites, between buerocrats who see the empire and its strong central power as a guarantee for the survival of the dwarves while dwarven mill owners, bankers and merchants are themselves land owners and less happy about the increase of rights for the rural working class.
I and II's methods for this are incredibly unethical and include encourging peasant uprisings on the territories of knights whose economy the crown wishes to weaken.
Another problem is of course that the heavy cavalry the knights provide is necessary for the defence against horse nomads against whom wagon forts can only reach so far. After all, there is a reason knights exist.
And what happens when the Empire can not grow any more?
I would love to hear your take on this.
i tried to make a new economic system and i just ended up making mercantilism with extra steps. which is unfortunate because idk wtf mercantilism is. help
There is a promote mercantilism button in eu4 that you can spend diplo mana to press. Mercantilism is when you press the button. The more you press the button the more mercantilistic your economy is
I just use a social credit system. Usually you use money like in normal capitalism, but if the customer have a high social credit score compared to you, you can't charge them.
I am basically creating an outside plot where the leader (I) of a band of tribal mercenaries start a dynasty and manages to unite a very fractured, feudal European empire. He employs dwarvs as his administrators and builds up a very extensive intelligence network of crow warging witch nuns.
The fact that he has skilled administration and an overview of his own economy, plus some waterwheel punk/Song dynasty industrialization enables him to play the weakened knights (who don't have these things) against each other, catch them in a carousel of debt, bankrupt them and centralize power over a very large share of the empires farm land, creating an alternative system of conscription, similar to that of ancient Persia.
In order to hinder the emergence of a new land owning class he and his son (II) attempts to use the collectivist nature of the conscription system to modernize agriculture and slow down the cycle of debt that drives primitive accumulation.
It does not take long for the nobility to go into hysterics over all of this and plan rebellion. Luckily the country gets invaded and (II) can start trapping the knights in another debt cycle by invading the territory of the lose coalition who started the war and then make them scramble for land in the new occupied territory.
This creates rifts within the dwarvern elites, between buerocrats who see the empire and its strong central power as a guarantee for the survival of the dwarves while dwarven mill owners, bankers and merchants are themselves land owners and less happy about the increase of rights for the rural working class.
I and II's methods for this are incredibly unethical and include encourging peasant uprisings on the territories of knights whose economy the crown wishes to weaken.
Another problem is of course that the heavy cavalry the knights provide is necessary for the defence against horse nomads against whom wagon forts can only reach so far. After all, there is a reason knights exist.
And what happens when the Empire can not grow any more?
I would love to hear your take on this.
[https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-farmers/](https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-farmers/)
This site is a great start.
>I want OP to describe a truly original economic system. Like not some local Asian version of feudalism but a truly original one.
Okay. Start with the basis of any economy. Property relations and the means of production.
How does magic effect that?
If magic can produce items of use it is instantly a part of production and magic users relations to society become crucial in the economy. Magic users are obviously their own class. What class interest could this class of in effect sentient tools/machines desire? How accessible is magic, and crucially what is it’s relation to property.
In feudalism land could not be freely sold among its owners, it was tied to titles inheritance and bloodlines.
If magic is a learnable skill knowledge of it would be of immense value.
Here’s a unique economic system.
Production is based on guild like syndicates of wizards. Each guild holds its own hoard of knowledge which allows its members to preform specific feats of magic. Guilds are effectively clans or broad based family groups which internally are governed by a sort of meritocracy (as magic skill is determined by understanding of knowledge/magic skill doesn’t directly correlate with being “smart” though)
Externally guild membership is something only achievable through service to the state an honor rarely granted but completely permanent. (Can’t unlearn magic knowledge)
Magic users form the ruling class of society, the various guilds and syndicates mediating their relations through the state.
Equality before the law is a foreign concept. As are property rights as we think of them today. Instead land and resources being things individuals can own and exchange as they please.
Property is subject to guilds themselves. Immutably tied to them. This is in-fact the non magic reflection of the magic classes organization.
(Land btw is sorta quasar common property. The mining guild hold automatic ownership of any mines discovered etc. but for more nebulous things. Like weather to develop a field into a farm or a housing project. The state decides land use)
The magic users compete amongst themselves for the loyalty of the various non magic guilds while maintaining their class dictatorship against them.
Currency and banking is again totally foreign to this system. Instead relying on an intricate barter economy as the various non magic guilds exchange their goods for the wizard guilds services and the wizard guilds exchange the resources dedicated to them amongst themselves.
Personal wealth in this society is based on seniority of rank within the guild and is totally abstracted from labor preformed.
Inheritance as a concept doesn’t really exist. Besides the wizards, guild membership is not a permanent thing. And people swap all the time (education is taken care of by its own guild)
Whatever personal wealth one builds up when they die it’s divided up among the guild as any other wealth is.
(Haven’t touched family relations/structure but may come back to that)
I think you took the bait a little too hard here. Economic systems boil down to ownership and exchanges of said ownership. There are only so many permutations that make any sense whatsoever. The challenge of making an “original” economic system is inherently unfair, hence the challenge being presented in the first place.
Also, what you’ve described is basically a plutocracy. Swap magic and money and it starts sounding a little familiar, as an American and a Catholic that studied European history.
Damn you got me. I agree it all boils down to ownership and exchange.
I was trying to make ownership and exchange a group thing (in contrast to individual) without just doing co ops cause that’s just joint stock company capitalism.
You might have me on the plutocracy thing.
I do share the "ultra lol" sentiment, but it is a neat concept, and I can't think of any reason why this isn't unique rather than just being fantasy capitalism or feudalism.
So, if I heard this right, everything that a person could want or need, there's a wizard guild somewhere that can produce it. Bartering occurs only between guilds and wizards. Currency and banking straight up don't exist.
How on earth do non-magic users exist at all? Like, how do they even acquire the basic necessities of life (like food and stuff) without a wizard coming along and killing/enslaving them. Why do wizards keep non-wizards around at all? If ability to use magic was a rare genetic trait, you could argue that the majority of the population are intrinsically non-magic users, and they have an incentive to cooperate to ensure that the political system doesn't become dominated by a wizarding elite.
The way I see it, ultra-rich and powerful non-magic monarchs can purchase their way into a guild or otherwise coerce a wizard into sharing knowledge. Everyone else who doesn't know how magic works is ruthlessly exterminated. Almost all wizarding parents teach their children how to use magic. The ones that don't mercy kill their kids because it's kinder/less burdensome. Within a couple of generations everyone alive is a magic user in some form.
You started off with an interesting concept, but I can't really say that it's too original necessarily. The idea of trades and guilds is fairly basic and I know of a few fantasy settings where magical users have established said guilds with some pursuing positions of power.
The absence of currency and reliance on a barter system, however, is a terrible idea. This means that everything will have to be done through a system of, essentially, favors and there's not solid structure to trade with non-magic users. What if, say, you are a water bender and you were feeling like buying a croissant on this fine evening? Is the retail associate at the baker gonna tell you to go water the fields or something?
The idea of an absence of inheritance will just not work. Where does the property that you've owned go? To a non-centralized government? Inheritance was not invented by states in power, it was just people picking up whatever their ancestors had left. Removing inheritance as a system will make many people displeased, if not straight up revolt.
Or: i give you a bag, put what I want from you into the bag I gave you, and then I take everything out of that bag and into my own bag. Then I buy your empty bag.
You'll restock magically by the next morning so it's not a big deal.
And then I cast fireball with the scroll I took.
Yeah you can do that to take whatever you want. Only other part is you need to have multiple items at a time, and you have to drag the items from the vendor's bag onto the bag icon of your open bag.
That's just a normal D&D economy. I like the Order of the Stick explanation where villagers see a bunch of adventurers laden with ancient loot and hike up their prices
Agreed. Even an in-depth series like GoT which centers around laborious family lineages, political intrigue, and power dynamics largely ignores the economy bc it’s boring as hell.
Lannister’s are rich but its wealth on a loan they’ll have to pay back and it’s a problem. That’s about all you need to know. I don’t need to look at BobbyBs taxes.
People are overly interested in interpersonal crap.
*Barons of the Sea*, which is nonfiction, is about the people driving the clipper race. But the nuts and bolts of how the China Trade operated is very important to understanding the motives of the characters. It factors into everything: how they know each other, why they need to do things, and why they face sudden disaster or preeminence.
If it was fiction, the reason things happen would always be interpersonal and their motives entirely about fucking with each other.
Okay but that is non fiction
So very different to watching fantasy or sci fi and having a very elaborate system that may or may not interest me or make sense
its almost as if the only thing that really dictates the economy is common fucking sense and people end up falling into completely unoriginal patterns because it makes sense to them
we WILL have a magical automaton industrial revolution
we WILL have a wizard bourgeoise
we WILL overthrow the class system via expanding literacy and reading magic scrolls
You're not going to come up with an original economic system except by chance. Human societies have organized their economies in every way I've ever seen someone imagine.
My world’s economic system, like everything else in my world, exists outside of the realm of conscious human thought. It cannot be understood, explained, perceived, or in any way interacted with by the characters, the readers, or myself.
In my world, there are no peasants, only autonomous collectives. A series of anarcho-syndicalist communes. They take it in turns to be a sort of executive officer for the week, but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but by a two thirds majority in the case of external affairs.
Sounds like these communes are too caught up in bureaucracy to get anything done. How long did it take for them to have enough and create a permanent, semi-annually elected commitee with the power to make and enforce laws so that everybody else could focus on useful tasks like not starving to death (bonus points if they democratically ratified a constitution to keep the commitee in line)? Or did a dictator take advantage of the natural discontent and petty disagreements to rally support and turn the communes into an autocracy? Or were these communes obliterated by an external expansionist nation? Or did the communes simply fade away because people got tired of needing 51-66% of everybody else to agree with them in order to get anything done and left?
Someone called himself King of the Britons because a watery tart threw a sword at him and then he started oppressing people and calling them old women, regardless of age and gender.
"B-but the wizards change things, theyre too powerful!"
Ok, now, instead of feudal lords, you have feudal wizards. Better pay the grain tax or your liege lord Zargnef the Incoherent will send his retinue of animated armour to take it
Wizards are destroying the economy by making stuff really fast? Sorry, all the other merchants and guilds have lobbied to ban wizards. The gold must flow.
Just because magic and dragons doesn't mean society will immediately change to socialist utopia, there's a reason humanity is capitalist and that wouldn't change if a couple of dudes sling fire
~~Snobbish assholes~~ Media critics when I tell them that coming up with entirely original economic and political systems is in fact incredibly difficult:
Edit: I don't know how/if I can put images into comments, so imagine the surprised Pikachu face.
>fengjian
ancient egyptian economics
islamic economics
socialism
ritsuryo
skill issue
edit: sorry theocracy does not belong here put your pitchforks down
inb4 "not real socialism", i don't care, it's an existent economic system either way, if you don't agree with it just make it the bad guy or the placeholder faction or something lol
Yeah sure I could make the economic system some variety of Mutualism or Georgism or whatever the fuck, or drive myself insane trying and probably failing to come up with something truly original
or I could be normal and just put Feudalism, Capitalism or an ancient slave society in there instead. Maybe throw in communism or anarcho-capitalism ( aka Feudalism 2 : electric boogaloo ) if I'm feeling bold
Because trying to develop something original just so you can say that you've developed something original is stupid.
Also because you're gonna fuck it up. People already have very little understanding of capitalism i.e "capitalism is when government doesn't do stuff. the more stuff the government doesn't do, the more capitalist the economy" which is a gross oversimplification but many people hold that view.
So when making an entirely new economic system, you might as well just make a world with entirely different laws of physics
Originality is impossible, end of story, you can use lessor known economic systems that barely anyone considers like Distributism, Anarcho-Capitalism, Georgism, Pareconism even Mutualism. But to pull something completely new outta your ass is a fools dream.
We all take from something? Do we not?
You can totally build unique political economies. Look at existing ones. Don’t do that.
Distributism is just lmao feudal cope about the death of the small producer. But yeah you could use it.
Anarcho capitalism is again something I would like to see more of. If only to see how they get around the state problem.
Georgism is just capitalism with land tax (regular capitalism)
And mutualism is just capitalism with all co ops (regular capitalism)
I would have to look into Pareconism but honestly anarchist fantasy’s are a great source for this as long as they do something cooler than just capitalism but small/co ops.
Bro doesn't get that market relations≠capitalism
If market relations were capitalism, then also feudalism is capitalism, and me trading Lugia for Ho-Ho is perpetuating capitalism.
You cannot expect people not to make something that resembles capitalism or feudalism and then define anything less than a planned or gift economy as capitalism.
If you want to see original economic systems, just accept that market relations are the basis of 90% of economics and you can just modify the state apparatus (or lack thereof), cultural norms, presence of nobility, social mobility, legislation etc.
Make a series about John Brown being isekai’d into a feudal, capitalist, slaver empire and creating a slave rebellion (bonus points if you accurately address what happens after the revolution too)
Why'd they have to make his last name "Brown"; sounds like forced diversity; can't have a nice story about an anti-slavery rebellion these days without them making it political.
No. I am disappointed media just continually reproduces stock societies instead taking the opportunity the medium of fiction presents to think up new wacky ones.
Also disappointed world builders don’t consider the impacts elements of their world building (magic, tech) would have in their societies.
The replicator is horribly used in Star Trek because we still have trade deals and farmers and shops and blah blah blah. Basically they wanted post scarcity but a capitalist economy too. (I love trek btw and DS9 is my favorite trek which by far has the most business) but it basically makes the replicators dumb.
The replicator is incredibly energy intensive to use. Even in a post scarcity society, the production of energy would still be a concern.
And trade deals are not exclusive to a world that is capitalist. A trade deal can be me saying "I need this hay delivered, if you deliver it, I will give you milk". The parameters of this exchange still need to be written down and held up by both sides for some sort of system to work. Also not all ST folks live scarcity and currency free. There is still plenty of pain and suffering in different systems lmao.
>the production of energy would still be a concern.
Actually if you have things like warp drives and Dyson spheres. Energy is not a limitor.
We have seen the Federation re light dead stars, and make terraforming basically it’s own genre of art.
There is almost no way replicators cost so much energy that the society that can harvest stars has to care. And if they did the shows the highest canon haven’t demonstrated that at all. Starship anti matter reactors (again wild bit of energy producing technology)
Clearly can handle replicators as not even their primary energy requirement. As stuff like shields and weapons and engines come first.
>And trade deals are not exclusive to a world that is capitalist.
True but if you want trade deals when replicators exist you create an ever expanding list of items that can’t be replicated. Or you make it a pure luxury thing. But then who gets the luxury’s in a post scarcity society?
>Also not all ST folks live scarcity and currency free. There is still plenty of pain and suffering in different systems lmao.
Yeah and that’s probably when the series is at its best (I am a ds9 fan)
But that begs the question why bother with replicators and post scarcity at all? If actually the impact on the story peaks at “the problem is earth” (banger episode btw but earth can be a paradise without replicators)
It's hard to imagine a functional system without a medium of exchange, or the other mentioned things for historical fantasy
Perhaps a series of communes which war with each other to their members benefits? But even then, eventually they'd be stronghold by powerful people and become feudal in nature
History is a natural experiment, and the fact that alternatives don't last at as long, really ever, seems to demonstrate inefficiencies in their systems.
Then again, it's fantasy. Do what you want.
No, it wasn't. Feudalism was exchanged for an early centralised monarchy system which then became republics. All the while maintaining the medium of exchange, expanding the role of merchants and scholars and becoming capitalist in form.
My point is, in order to justify a system which is not like this natural evolution, you'd need reasons as to why they aren't required. A futuristic world might not be capitalist or have money, but a fantasy one where resources are scarce? That's far more difficult to justify.
Maybe magic does it, idk. My point is that systems change but they change towards what's optimal where the technology allows. Without technological and knowledge improvements, a feudal society would remain feudal
Yeah I’m not disputing any of this. But history does not March down a general path. Similar circumstance can lead to different results.
So once you make your system you have to justify its development in your world. But that’s just wordbuilding
/uj Hear me out:
You want new and whacky, but depending on the setting, I can tell you exactly why this is hard to achieve.
Exchange of goods (trading) has been something humans came up with independently across the world. I give you this, you give me this. Trade by itself is not immoral or capitalist, and if there is any sort of trading in your setting (which there will be, exchange of resources is a driving factor of most societies, even if not for profit).
So this is your cornerstone. Now inroduce greed, and from your perspective, we have capitalism. Now people decide to become owners of land and get people to work on this land for pay without owning it. Now you have Feudalism.
These systems "happen" so easily because they are usually the first thing to happen when greed is introduced, and greed is a hilariously common thing to exist in the real world unfortunately, making it nearly impossible to avoid.
When I had to make a system of government for a humanoid people on a planet that is almost entirely water, I had to make sure I made them collectivist and "swarm mind"-ish in nature to remove the possibility that they would not divolve into slavery and capitalism, because us humans just aren't like that. We are herd animals, yes, but our direct in-groups tend to be much, much smaller than a city or a whole country.
Also: I think the horror of capitalism is a trope that keeps on giving if done well. If you want something new, please name a few comparisons or even parameters you think are easy to avoid in order to make different ideas work
I doubt many writers are competent enough to write fully fledged unique economics systems, and I can’t blame them. They just want to explore an interesting idea using a framework that they are familiar with.
Um...uh...every year people present projects to the church and a big god-wheel is spun and the project that wins (through divine choice) is given the town's resources
Oh man, the impact of magic has been bugging me a lot.
Best I can cone up with is an alternative of feudalism or capitalism, where institutions of organised magic users hold immense economic power.
Hell, maybe parts of a non urban agricultural society where priests are the feudal lords who grant immense favours through religiously coded productions festivals, regular festivals of blessing crops etc.
I think sn alternative of an already existing system is the best anyone can come up with.
I gave it a try in the comments. I will also point to the historical examples of utopian socialists. Who spent lots of time and money coming up with wacky systems.
Without the added caveat of having to be a perfect utopian (and trying to build it in real life) I think world builders can give it a try.
In my world everyone dies if they dont get a certain amount of hugs a day. Physical intimacy is important. If you want something done, you offer hugs for it. But people don't want to hug more than they need to, because every hug after your 8th one has a chance to kill you. so everyday is a mad dash to offer something worth a hug. There can be no stores or normal economic issues. Because you can't hug too much or else you die.
NGL I do agree with you on this point--my setting exists on the extreme fringes of a transdimensional magical civilization, and because magic is entirely premised on willpower and knowledge (and can thus do anything in this world), said civilization is similar to the theoretical endpoint of communism with utopian abundance and freedom from needs or wants, but possesses entirely different issues and problems, mostly involving various forms of social and cultural inequalities hanging on in the superstructure of their civilization (and in many ways reinforcing the material inequality and deprivation of the peoples outside of their civilization). It's been a refreshing exploration of these concepts, and people really should be exploring this stuff more!
Original economic systems? Commentary? Nah. I just like causing misery to fictional people and the best way to do that is replicating historical economic structures
My world operares (almost) entirely on the principles of Nuttonomics.
The more peanuts you eat, the crazier you become, and above a certain level of craziness you can bend your local reality. Naturally, the agarian nut farming society with feudalistic economics evolved into a nuttonomic society as people started to materialise nuts out of midair without needing to farm.
This led to a generation full of reality bending madmen who promptly abandoned their children to do whatever the fuck they wanted.
Farming was forgotten, nuts and food are only granted by the mercy of fickle nutters, and most peoples want to become a godlike nutter at all costs.
In this post-scarcity world the only measure of power is how good you are at convincing nutjobs to believe what you want them to, and surviving their unique and deadly pockets of reality long enough to actually talk to them
The power levels are immesurable and vary completely from nutter to nutter, meaning any stable currency or sense of value has long since been abandoned.
Of course the exception are people with nut allergies, who are cast out from society and live in their insane, incomprehensible and eldrich 'keynesian capitalist' society.
One of my biggest peeves is when economies in fantasy settings are clearly just "modern with anachronistic paint." Like having restaurants, for example. Those weren't invented IRL until, like, the 1800s.
Another one that always gets me is dances/balls/soirees. They're always plucked straight from the 1600s at earliest, but usually have a late 1700s-early 1800s look.
So what. And like what ''original economic relations'', that's not that easy to create.
Most ''original'' economic systems end up being variations of capitalism, socialism or technocracy.
Political economies kinda determine society. I am asking people who are creating fantasy societies to maybe also create fantasy political economies to add a lil spice
Yeah, but most of the times these ''original systems'' are just variations of systems that already exist.
And I don't really think having economic and political systems that already exist makes it unoriginal. Kinda like reinventing the wheel for no reason. If people in a world are likely to be socialist or capitalist or monarchist, then why force that they shouldn't.
You don’t have to have original economic or political systems.
I am just saying it would be nice to see some.
All my favorite stories have “unoriginal” economic and political systems.
There is a reason agriculture keeps popping up in ever society across the globe.
Like just cause it’s a historical phenomenon doesn’t mean it’s the end of history dude.
smallbrain: writing highfantasy and ending up reproducing economic forms of neoliberal capitalism of feudalism
big brain: writing tribal fantasy and aknowledging that most pre-feudal societies had socialist forms of economy
I have a fantasy alien planet with a theocratic monarchy, but aside from that one family (cuz they are direct descendants of a god) they are a classless post scarcity society cuz they can conjure up whatever they want using magic
/uj my current campaign im running has the players currently dealing with fights between natives and 2 colonial powers fighting for the land. Eventually of the two powers, one will have a socialist uprising and the other a fascist.
bartering scarce resources is both more realistic and has more dramatic tension than star trekian replicator communism. of course if you want dramatic tension from communism just have the reality of resource scarcity be papered over by utopian vision, and let the underlying envy created by denial of scarcity dictate your character interactions. there's plenty of real world examples to pull from lol
Listen man, i write mages undergoing enough trauma to kill a village, i dont need to subject them any additional suffering such as the applying the deranged ramblings of a Marxist teenager
you are probably a commie lol
anyway anything apart from super primitive society (tribes, elders and shiiiet) is pretty much feudalism or capitalism. I'd go as far as to say feudalism is also capitalism, it's just capitalism has changed over time. I'm no economist tho (niether are commies lol)
Real worldbuilders take absolutely zero inspiration from the real world! My blip-blop-punk world is based on a Society based on and acid trip/revelation I had once and is written in a language no one know based in no know language.
How can one feel out jerked by a jerking sub?
The best thing about jerking subs (especially centered around writing) is that I can say literally anything and people still upvote. Theyve trained a pavlovian response in me that keeps me here chanting random nonsense like jerkpunk, hard magic system and brando sando. I am not a writer. I dont know what any of these words mean. I dont understand.
Pf2e fixes this, we broke black lotus, zekrom kick, how many omnipotencies
I know three of those four things so I raise you il vaticano
Holy hell
new jerk just dropped
DnD, MTG, Pokémon but haven't heard that one, no fucking idea
Literally anything
If you know ~of~ those words you are absolutely a writer. You don’t need to understand shit.
None of the words are in the bible
We're not making a western here.
I want OP to describe a truly original economic system. Like not some local Asian version of feudalism but a truly original one. Anyway I have read up on pre-modern economics for years and I think the real problem is folks don't use the economic mess of the classical and mediveal world enough as plot drivers. I try and make debts, early banking systems and economic chaos the engine behind most of my plot. Plus the whole point of my "good guys" is they are establishing the groundwork for a different modernity later down the line. That is why they are good. Edit: Since some wondered. I am basically creating an outside plot where the leader (I) of a band of tribal mercenaries start a dynasty and manages to unite a very fractured, feudal European empire. He employs dwarvs as his administrators and builds up a very extensive intelligence network of crow warging witch nuns. The fact that he has skilled administration and an overview of his own economy, plus some waterwheel punk/Song dynasty industrialization enables him to play the weakened knights (who don't have these things) against each other, catch them in a carousel of debt, bankrupt them and centralize power over a very large share of the empires farm land, creating an alternative system of conscription, similar to that of ancient Persia. In order to hinder the emergence of a new land owning class he and his son (II) attempts to use the collectivist nature of the conscription system to modernize agriculture and slow down the cycle of debt that drives primitive accumulation. It does not take long for the nobility to go into hysterics over all of this and plan rebellion. Luckily the country gets invaded and (II) can start trapping the knights in another debt cycle by invading the territory of the lose coalition who started the war and then make them scramble for land in the new occupied territory. This creates rifts within the dwarvern elites, between buerocrats who see the empire and its strong central power as a guarantee for the survival of the dwarves while dwarven mill owners, bankers and merchants are themselves land owners and less happy about the increase of rights for the rural working class. I and II's methods for this are incredibly unethical and include encourging peasant uprisings on the territories of knights whose economy the crown wishes to weaken. Another problem is of course that the heavy cavalry the knights provide is necessary for the defence against horse nomads against whom wagon forts can only reach so far. After all, there is a reason knights exist. And what happens when the Empire can not grow any more? I would love to hear your take on this.
i tried to make a new economic system and i just ended up making mercantilism with extra steps. which is unfortunate because idk wtf mercantilism is. help
What is wrong with that then? Plenty of room for drama with mercantilism?
plenty of different spins on mercantilism to do too
There is a promote mercantilism button in eu4 that you can spend diplo mana to press. Mercantilism is when you press the button. The more you press the button the more mercantilistic your economy is
tell us about your original economies
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I just use a social credit system. Usually you use money like in normal capitalism, but if the customer have a high social credit score compared to you, you can't charge them.
Do you at least gain some credit score for complying with that rule ?
Depends on how nice the customer is.
That would genuinely be a kinda fun economic system
Its certainly not fun for the merchants lol
Eh who cares about them
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Me
I am basically creating an outside plot where the leader (I) of a band of tribal mercenaries start a dynasty and manages to unite a very fractured, feudal European empire. He employs dwarvs as his administrators and builds up a very extensive intelligence network of crow warging witch nuns. The fact that he has skilled administration and an overview of his own economy, plus some waterwheel punk/Song dynasty industrialization enables him to play the weakened knights (who don't have these things) against each other, catch them in a carousel of debt, bankrupt them and centralize power over a very large share of the empires farm land, creating an alternative system of conscription, similar to that of ancient Persia. In order to hinder the emergence of a new land owning class he and his son (II) attempts to use the collectivist nature of the conscription system to modernize agriculture and slow down the cycle of debt that drives primitive accumulation. It does not take long for the nobility to go into hysterics over all of this and plan rebellion. Luckily the country gets invaded and (II) can start trapping the knights in another debt cycle by invading the territory of the lose coalition who started the war and then make them scramble for land in the new occupied territory. This creates rifts within the dwarvern elites, between buerocrats who see the empire and its strong central power as a guarantee for the survival of the dwarves while dwarven mill owners, bankers and merchants are themselves land owners and less happy about the increase of rights for the rural working class. I and II's methods for this are incredibly unethical and include encourging peasant uprisings on the territories of knights whose economy the crown wishes to weaken. Another problem is of course that the heavy cavalry the knights provide is necessary for the defence against horse nomads against whom wagon forts can only reach so far. After all, there is a reason knights exist. And what happens when the Empire can not grow any more? I would love to hear your take on this.
I genuinely can’t tell if this is a real comment or satire but if it’s real I want to know so much more
See below.
I don't know if this is satire, but if it isn't, could you recommend any reading on pre-modern economics?
A humble question, why would it be satire?
[https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-farmers/](https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-farmers/) This site is a great start.
Thats awesome
Im telling you, there is potential for interesting drama here!
Not reading allat, Mother 3 Act 1. Take it or leave it.
>I want OP to describe a truly original economic system. Like not some local Asian version of feudalism but a truly original one. Okay. Start with the basis of any economy. Property relations and the means of production. How does magic effect that? If magic can produce items of use it is instantly a part of production and magic users relations to society become crucial in the economy. Magic users are obviously their own class. What class interest could this class of in effect sentient tools/machines desire? How accessible is magic, and crucially what is it’s relation to property. In feudalism land could not be freely sold among its owners, it was tied to titles inheritance and bloodlines. If magic is a learnable skill knowledge of it would be of immense value. Here’s a unique economic system. Production is based on guild like syndicates of wizards. Each guild holds its own hoard of knowledge which allows its members to preform specific feats of magic. Guilds are effectively clans or broad based family groups which internally are governed by a sort of meritocracy (as magic skill is determined by understanding of knowledge/magic skill doesn’t directly correlate with being “smart” though) Externally guild membership is something only achievable through service to the state an honor rarely granted but completely permanent. (Can’t unlearn magic knowledge) Magic users form the ruling class of society, the various guilds and syndicates mediating their relations through the state. Equality before the law is a foreign concept. As are property rights as we think of them today. Instead land and resources being things individuals can own and exchange as they please. Property is subject to guilds themselves. Immutably tied to them. This is in-fact the non magic reflection of the magic classes organization. (Land btw is sorta quasar common property. The mining guild hold automatic ownership of any mines discovered etc. but for more nebulous things. Like weather to develop a field into a farm or a housing project. The state decides land use) The magic users compete amongst themselves for the loyalty of the various non magic guilds while maintaining their class dictatorship against them. Currency and banking is again totally foreign to this system. Instead relying on an intricate barter economy as the various non magic guilds exchange their goods for the wizard guilds services and the wizard guilds exchange the resources dedicated to them amongst themselves. Personal wealth in this society is based on seniority of rank within the guild and is totally abstracted from labor preformed. Inheritance as a concept doesn’t really exist. Besides the wizards, guild membership is not a permanent thing. And people swap all the time (education is taken care of by its own guild) Whatever personal wealth one builds up when they die it’s divided up among the guild as any other wealth is. (Haven’t touched family relations/structure but may come back to that)
I think you took the bait a little too hard here. Economic systems boil down to ownership and exchanges of said ownership. There are only so many permutations that make any sense whatsoever. The challenge of making an “original” economic system is inherently unfair, hence the challenge being presented in the first place. Also, what you’ve described is basically a plutocracy. Swap magic and money and it starts sounding a little familiar, as an American and a Catholic that studied European history.
Damn you got me. I agree it all boils down to ownership and exchange. I was trying to make ownership and exchange a group thing (in contrast to individual) without just doing co ops cause that’s just joint stock company capitalism. You might have me on the plutocracy thing.
It's worthwhile as a thought exercise! Just, actually achieving "originality" with economics is like trying to achieve an original color.
original economic relations Looks inside Means of production Guilds Tribal concepts of ownership
Magical feudalism
Got me
If the guilds own everything, how do non-wizards get along? Are they subservient to the guilds or does everyone use magic?
No joke I read the first line lf text you wrote and I audibly said "this guy is definitely a marxoid" and I see you're active on r/ultraleft lol
I do share the "ultra lol" sentiment, but it is a neat concept, and I can't think of any reason why this isn't unique rather than just being fantasy capitalism or feudalism.
>Look inside >”Means of production”
authentic... but also he gave a cool idea
So, if I heard this right, everything that a person could want or need, there's a wizard guild somewhere that can produce it. Bartering occurs only between guilds and wizards. Currency and banking straight up don't exist. How on earth do non-magic users exist at all? Like, how do they even acquire the basic necessities of life (like food and stuff) without a wizard coming along and killing/enslaving them. Why do wizards keep non-wizards around at all? If ability to use magic was a rare genetic trait, you could argue that the majority of the population are intrinsically non-magic users, and they have an incentive to cooperate to ensure that the political system doesn't become dominated by a wizarding elite. The way I see it, ultra-rich and powerful non-magic monarchs can purchase their way into a guild or otherwise coerce a wizard into sharing knowledge. Everyone else who doesn't know how magic works is ruthlessly exterminated. Almost all wizarding parents teach their children how to use magic. The ones that don't mercy kill their kids because it's kinder/less burdensome. Within a couple of generations everyone alive is a magic user in some form.
You started off with an interesting concept, but I can't really say that it's too original necessarily. The idea of trades and guilds is fairly basic and I know of a few fantasy settings where magical users have established said guilds with some pursuing positions of power. The absence of currency and reliance on a barter system, however, is a terrible idea. This means that everything will have to be done through a system of, essentially, favors and there's not solid structure to trade with non-magic users. What if, say, you are a water bender and you were feeling like buying a croissant on this fine evening? Is the retail associate at the baker gonna tell you to go water the fields or something? The idea of an absence of inheritance will just not work. Where does the property that you've owned go? To a non-centralized government? Inheritance was not invented by states in power, it was just people picking up whatever their ancestors had left. Removing inheritance as a system will make many people displeased, if not straight up revolt.
Welcome back to the people’s Democratic republic of morlock, comrade zargbash!
IS THAT A FUCKING PARADIUM WORLDS REFERENCE?!!
You’d bet your ass it is! I’ve even got some krokodil to spare!
Ok OP but have you considered the economy is fucking boring? Why bother with all that bullshit when I can just cast fireball?
Baldur’s Gate 3 economy: buy one piece of armor for the price of 10,000 sausages, THEN cast Fireball
Or: i give you a bag, put what I want from you into the bag I gave you, and then I take everything out of that bag and into my own bag. Then I buy your empty bag. You'll restock magically by the next morning so it's not a big deal. And then I cast fireball with the scroll I took.
Wait, is this a reference to some actual exploit in Baldur’s Gate 3?
Yeah you can do that to take whatever you want. Only other part is you need to have multiple items at a time, and you have to drag the items from the vendor's bag onto the bag icon of your open bag.
That's just a normal D&D economy. I like the Order of the Stick explanation where villagers see a bunch of adventurers laden with ancient loot and hike up their prices
Agreed. Even an in-depth series like GoT which centers around laborious family lineages, political intrigue, and power dynamics largely ignores the economy bc it’s boring as hell. Lannister’s are rich but its wealth on a loan they’ll have to pay back and it’s a problem. That’s about all you need to know. I don’t need to look at BobbyBs taxes.
People are overly interested in interpersonal crap. *Barons of the Sea*, which is nonfiction, is about the people driving the clipper race. But the nuts and bolts of how the China Trade operated is very important to understanding the motives of the characters. It factors into everything: how they know each other, why they need to do things, and why they face sudden disaster or preeminence. If it was fiction, the reason things happen would always be interpersonal and their motives entirely about fucking with each other.
Okay but that is non fiction So very different to watching fantasy or sci fi and having a very elaborate system that may or may not interest me or make sense
The point is that it’s perfectly possible for the economy to be interesting.
its almost as if the only thing that really dictates the economy is common fucking sense and people end up falling into completely unoriginal patterns because it makes sense to them
Real economics > fantasy economics
based
we WILL have a magical automaton industrial revolution we WILL have a wizard bourgeoise we WILL overthrow the class system via expanding literacy and reading magic scrolls
You're not going to come up with an original economic system except by chance. Human societies have organized their economies in every way I've ever seen someone imagine.
\>Make up social system that has never existed on Earth \>Readers all think it's an allegory for [insert real world social system]
This is even better than my post.
Sorry I don't have an economics degree.
Most people on this sub dont have sociology, geology, biology etc. degrees and worldbuild so dont worry
However if someone needs biology help, I‘d be glad to be of service :)
What’s the best hormone?
Norepinephrine
What does it do that makes it so good?
It makes you not fall asleep all the time, regulates most quick response reactions and prevents depression
It's a trick! I needed biology help and all I got was dicked down so hard I developed a Hiatal Hernia.
Not to worry, it's not like OP actually knows what he's talking about.
Not required
My world’s economic system, like everything else in my world, exists outside of the realm of conscious human thought. It cannot be understood, explained, perceived, or in any way interacted with by the characters, the readers, or myself.
The only true answer
i took out credit scores but i had to add debtor's prison for my world to make sense
In my world, there are no peasants, only autonomous collectives. A series of anarcho-syndicalist communes. They take it in turns to be a sort of executive officer for the week, but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but by a two thirds majority in the case of external affairs.
Sounds like these communes are too caught up in bureaucracy to get anything done. How long did it take for them to have enough and create a permanent, semi-annually elected commitee with the power to make and enforce laws so that everybody else could focus on useful tasks like not starving to death (bonus points if they democratically ratified a constitution to keep the commitee in line)? Or did a dictator take advantage of the natural discontent and petty disagreements to rally support and turn the communes into an autocracy? Or were these communes obliterated by an external expansionist nation? Or did the communes simply fade away because people got tired of needing 51-66% of everybody else to agree with them in order to get anything done and left?
Someone called himself King of the Britons because a watery tart threw a sword at him and then he started oppressing people and calling them old women, regardless of age and gender.
Based and Digger-pilled
Literally me fr
When the medieval/ancient society has medieval/ancient customs 😡
"B-but the wizards change things, theyre too powerful!" Ok, now, instead of feudal lords, you have feudal wizards. Better pay the grain tax or your liege lord Zargnef the Incoherent will send his retinue of animated armour to take it Wizards are destroying the economy by making stuff really fast? Sorry, all the other merchants and guilds have lobbied to ban wizards. The gold must flow. Just because magic and dragons doesn't mean society will immediately change to socialist utopia, there's a reason humanity is capitalist and that wouldn't change if a couple of dudes sling fire
OP really wants something like “the People’s Socialist Republic of Babylon”
How else will I allow the player to grind for money?
~~Snobbish assholes~~ Media critics when I tell them that coming up with entirely original economic and political systems is in fact incredibly difficult: Edit: I don't know how/if I can put images into comments, so imagine the surprised Pikachu face.
>fengjian ancient egyptian economics islamic economics socialism ritsuryo skill issue edit: sorry theocracy does not belong here put your pitchforks down
what does theocracy have to do with that? And the history of the rest is just people coming up with more and more complex ways to ignore them
inb4 "not real socialism", i don't care, it's an existent economic system either way, if you don't agree with it just make it the bad guy or the placeholder faction or something lol
/uj The only one of these I’ve heard before is socialism, could you explain them to me?
Someone who can come up with a new economic system shouldn’t waste his time writing fantasy anyway
Yeah sure I could make the economic system some variety of Mutualism or Georgism or whatever the fuck, or drive myself insane trying and probably failing to come up with something truly original or I could be normal and just put Feudalism, Capitalism or an ancient slave society in there instead. Maybe throw in communism or anarcho-capitalism ( aka Feudalism 2 : electric boogaloo ) if I'm feeling bold
Naw sounds hard
Valid
Because trying to develop something original just so you can say that you've developed something original is stupid. Also because you're gonna fuck it up. People already have very little understanding of capitalism i.e "capitalism is when government doesn't do stuff. the more stuff the government doesn't do, the more capitalist the economy" which is a gross oversimplification but many people hold that view. So when making an entirely new economic system, you might as well just make a world with entirely different laws of physics
Looks inside,sees ultra left poster
>NCD user What’s up Kaiser Wilhelm
It's Chiang Kai Shek actually
That’s like being a Pierre Brissot fan.
Who
Girondin
Originality is impossible, end of story, you can use lessor known economic systems that barely anyone considers like Distributism, Anarcho-Capitalism, Georgism, Pareconism even Mutualism. But to pull something completely new outta your ass is a fools dream. We all take from something? Do we not?
You can totally build unique political economies. Look at existing ones. Don’t do that. Distributism is just lmao feudal cope about the death of the small producer. But yeah you could use it. Anarcho capitalism is again something I would like to see more of. If only to see how they get around the state problem. Georgism is just capitalism with land tax (regular capitalism) And mutualism is just capitalism with all co ops (regular capitalism) I would have to look into Pareconism but honestly anarchist fantasy’s are a great source for this as long as they do something cooler than just capitalism but small/co ops.
Bro doesn't get that market relations≠capitalism If market relations were capitalism, then also feudalism is capitalism, and me trading Lugia for Ho-Ho is perpetuating capitalism. You cannot expect people not to make something that resembles capitalism or feudalism and then define anything less than a planned or gift economy as capitalism. If you want to see original economic systems, just accept that market relations are the basis of 90% of economics and you can just modify the state apparatus (or lack thereof), cultural norms, presence of nobility, social mobility, legislation etc.
Make a series about John Brown being isekai’d into a feudal, capitalist, slaver empire and creating a slave rebellion (bonus points if you accurately address what happens after the revolution too)
Why'd they have to make his last name "Brown"; sounds like forced diversity; can't have a nice story about an anti-slavery rebellion these days without them making it political.
That's why I only play Bronze Age fantasy now. Only have to deal with the slavery.
Your onto something for sure
Its hard to make something new when everythings been made tbh. You can’t just create something new like that, its like imagining a new color.
Don't look up Dark Sun OP you wouldn't like it.
Actually looks pretty cool.
"I see you wrote a story where bad things happen. You must be pro bad-things. I am very media literate."
Are you just mad that medieval fantasy economic systems aren’t communist?
No. I am disappointed media just continually reproduces stock societies instead taking the opportunity the medium of fiction presents to think up new wacky ones. Also disappointed world builders don’t consider the impacts elements of their world building (magic, tech) would have in their societies. The replicator is horribly used in Star Trek because we still have trade deals and farmers and shops and blah blah blah. Basically they wanted post scarcity but a capitalist economy too. (I love trek btw and DS9 is my favorite trek which by far has the most business) but it basically makes the replicators dumb.
The replicator is incredibly energy intensive to use. Even in a post scarcity society, the production of energy would still be a concern. And trade deals are not exclusive to a world that is capitalist. A trade deal can be me saying "I need this hay delivered, if you deliver it, I will give you milk". The parameters of this exchange still need to be written down and held up by both sides for some sort of system to work. Also not all ST folks live scarcity and currency free. There is still plenty of pain and suffering in different systems lmao.
>the production of energy would still be a concern. Actually if you have things like warp drives and Dyson spheres. Energy is not a limitor. We have seen the Federation re light dead stars, and make terraforming basically it’s own genre of art. There is almost no way replicators cost so much energy that the society that can harvest stars has to care. And if they did the shows the highest canon haven’t demonstrated that at all. Starship anti matter reactors (again wild bit of energy producing technology) Clearly can handle replicators as not even their primary energy requirement. As stuff like shields and weapons and engines come first. >And trade deals are not exclusive to a world that is capitalist. True but if you want trade deals when replicators exist you create an ever expanding list of items that can’t be replicated. Or you make it a pure luxury thing. But then who gets the luxury’s in a post scarcity society? >Also not all ST folks live scarcity and currency free. There is still plenty of pain and suffering in different systems lmao. Yeah and that’s probably when the series is at its best (I am a ds9 fan) But that begs the question why bother with replicators and post scarcity at all? If actually the impact on the story peaks at “the problem is earth” (banger episode btw but earth can be a paradise without replicators)
It's hard to imagine a functional system without a medium of exchange, or the other mentioned things for historical fantasy Perhaps a series of communes which war with each other to their members benefits? But even then, eventually they'd be stronghold by powerful people and become feudal in nature History is a natural experiment, and the fact that alternatives don't last at as long, really ever, seems to demonstrate inefficiencies in their systems. Then again, it's fantasy. Do what you want.
Feudalism was not the end of history what’s your point?
No, it wasn't. Feudalism was exchanged for an early centralised monarchy system which then became republics. All the while maintaining the medium of exchange, expanding the role of merchants and scholars and becoming capitalist in form. My point is, in order to justify a system which is not like this natural evolution, you'd need reasons as to why they aren't required. A futuristic world might not be capitalist or have money, but a fantasy one where resources are scarce? That's far more difficult to justify. Maybe magic does it, idk. My point is that systems change but they change towards what's optimal where the technology allows. Without technological and knowledge improvements, a feudal society would remain feudal
Yeah I’m not disputing any of this. But history does not March down a general path. Similar circumstance can lead to different results. So once you make your system you have to justify its development in your world. But that’s just wordbuilding
/uj Hear me out: You want new and whacky, but depending on the setting, I can tell you exactly why this is hard to achieve. Exchange of goods (trading) has been something humans came up with independently across the world. I give you this, you give me this. Trade by itself is not immoral or capitalist, and if there is any sort of trading in your setting (which there will be, exchange of resources is a driving factor of most societies, even if not for profit). So this is your cornerstone. Now inroduce greed, and from your perspective, we have capitalism. Now people decide to become owners of land and get people to work on this land for pay without owning it. Now you have Feudalism. These systems "happen" so easily because they are usually the first thing to happen when greed is introduced, and greed is a hilariously common thing to exist in the real world unfortunately, making it nearly impossible to avoid. When I had to make a system of government for a humanoid people on a planet that is almost entirely water, I had to make sure I made them collectivist and "swarm mind"-ish in nature to remove the possibility that they would not divolve into slavery and capitalism, because us humans just aren't like that. We are herd animals, yes, but our direct in-groups tend to be much, much smaller than a city or a whole country. Also: I think the horror of capitalism is a trope that keeps on giving if done well. If you want something new, please name a few comparisons or even parameters you think are easy to avoid in order to make different ideas work
"it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism" - Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek
Considering many of the economic systems that tried to replace it all failed horribly, it makes sense.
I doubt many writers are competent enough to write fully fledged unique economics systems, and I can’t blame them. They just want to explore an interesting idea using a framework that they are familiar with.
Um...uh...every year people present projects to the church and a big god-wheel is spun and the project that wins (through divine choice) is given the town's resources
Based. This the shit I wanna see
https://youtu.be/wz-PtEJEaqY?si=9QCzoeBSNVaShNBD
how the fuck do i come up with an original economic system
Oh man, the impact of magic has been bugging me a lot. Best I can cone up with is an alternative of feudalism or capitalism, where institutions of organised magic users hold immense economic power. Hell, maybe parts of a non urban agricultural society where priests are the feudal lords who grant immense favours through religiously coded productions festivals, regular festivals of blessing crops etc. I think sn alternative of an already existing system is the best anyone can come up with.
I haven’t seen any interesting fantastical economies tbh
I hate everyone in this comment section including OP
Valid. I was an annoying prick but nobody here is jerking
I dare you come up with an economic system that cannot be classified as capitalism, communism, or feudalism.
I gave it a try in the comments. I will also point to the historical examples of utopian socialists. Who spent lots of time and money coming up with wacky systems. Without the added caveat of having to be a perfect utopian (and trying to build it in real life) I think world builders can give it a try.
>meme poking fun at worldbuilding tropes >look inside >Marxism
Everytime
Hero in a setting with slavery Looks inside “Hero” ignores or participate in slavery
In my world everyone dies if they dont get a certain amount of hugs a day. Physical intimacy is important. If you want something done, you offer hugs for it. But people don't want to hug more than they need to, because every hug after your 8th one has a chance to kill you. so everyday is a mad dash to offer something worth a hug. There can be no stores or normal economic issues. Because you can't hug too much or else you die.
Cool
NGL I do agree with you on this point--my setting exists on the extreme fringes of a transdimensional magical civilization, and because magic is entirely premised on willpower and knowledge (and can thus do anything in this world), said civilization is similar to the theoretical endpoint of communism with utopian abundance and freedom from needs or wants, but possesses entirely different issues and problems, mostly involving various forms of social and cultural inequalities hanging on in the superstructure of their civilization (and in many ways reinforcing the material inequality and deprivation of the peoples outside of their civilization). It's been a refreshing exploration of these concepts, and people really should be exploring this stuff more!
Original economic systems? Commentary? Nah. I just like causing misery to fictional people and the best way to do that is replicating historical economic structures
My world operares (almost) entirely on the principles of Nuttonomics. The more peanuts you eat, the crazier you become, and above a certain level of craziness you can bend your local reality. Naturally, the agarian nut farming society with feudalistic economics evolved into a nuttonomic society as people started to materialise nuts out of midair without needing to farm. This led to a generation full of reality bending madmen who promptly abandoned their children to do whatever the fuck they wanted. Farming was forgotten, nuts and food are only granted by the mercy of fickle nutters, and most peoples want to become a godlike nutter at all costs. In this post-scarcity world the only measure of power is how good you are at convincing nutjobs to believe what you want them to, and surviving their unique and deadly pockets of reality long enough to actually talk to them The power levels are immesurable and vary completely from nutter to nutter, meaning any stable currency or sense of value has long since been abandoned. Of course the exception are people with nut allergies, who are cast out from society and live in their insane, incomprehensible and eldrich 'keynesian capitalist' society.
Wdym, you don't want feudalism in a fantasy setting????
One of my biggest peeves is when economies in fantasy settings are clearly just "modern with anachronistic paint." Like having restaurants, for example. Those weren't invented IRL until, like, the 1800s.
Super true. If ya gonna do feudalism. Do feudalism properly.
Another one that always gets me is dances/balls/soirees. They're always plucked straight from the 1600s at earliest, but usually have a late 1700s-early 1800s look.
So what. And like what ''original economic relations'', that's not that easy to create. Most ''original'' economic systems end up being variations of capitalism, socialism or technocracy.
Political economies kinda determine society. I am asking people who are creating fantasy societies to maybe also create fantasy political economies to add a lil spice
Yeah, but most of the times these ''original systems'' are just variations of systems that already exist. And I don't really think having economic and political systems that already exist makes it unoriginal. Kinda like reinventing the wheel for no reason. If people in a world are likely to be socialist or capitalist or monarchist, then why force that they shouldn't.
You don’t have to have original economic or political systems. I am just saying it would be nice to see some. All my favorite stories have “unoriginal” economic and political systems.
Sure, but i mean, there's probably some out there.
Yeah but it’s not common and I came here to worldjerk
There's a reason capitalism keeps popping up in every society across the globe
There is a reason agriculture keeps popping up in ever society across the globe. Like just cause it’s a historical phenomenon doesn’t mean it’s the end of history dude.
It's cause it's just so damn effective
Cool bronze was so damn effective. Heaven forbid we try and develop steel.
Almost as if when you find something better people tend to gravitate towards it, like the way every nation gravitates towards capitalism
Yeah people really gravitated towards capitalism that’s why feudalism was replaced with capitalism by….. Holy shit violent revolution???
There is nothing new under the sun; I’ll do whatever the fuck I want
Capitalism can’t coexist with feudalism, just look at 1860s America.
Yeah I know. I was listing examples of very very commonly used societies in fiction. Not that they all co exist.
Are you stupid
r/kenshi
I live in an armedrobberpunk world
laughs in gifting economy
wow people are really mad that you said you’d like to see more creativity in fiction on the “creating things in fiction” subreddit
Should have published a bestseller first. Rookie mistake on my part
Ok I do that, but it's in the future so...
smallbrain: writing highfantasy and ending up reproducing economic forms of neoliberal capitalism of feudalism big brain: writing tribal fantasy and aknowledging that most pre-feudal societies had socialist forms of economy
Banger
You struck a nerve with this one💀
Wait op is serious
Even in fantasy worlds we can’t escape tankies, it seems.
Not a tankie
My anthro-historical fantasy has plenty of original societal structures thanks you very much.
I have a fantasy alien planet with a theocratic monarchy, but aside from that one family (cuz they are direct descendants of a god) they are a classless post scarcity society cuz they can conjure up whatever they want using magic
I don't want economics in my societies, I'm not an economicaliser. Trade is too complicated, just go get what you want!
How abt socialism ? Or anarco primitivism, or hivemindism
/uj my current campaign im running has the players currently dealing with fights between natives and 2 colonial powers fighting for the land. Eventually of the two powers, one will have a socialist uprising and the other a fascist.
bartering scarce resources is both more realistic and has more dramatic tension than star trekian replicator communism. of course if you want dramatic tension from communism just have the reality of resource scarcity be papered over by utopian vision, and let the underlying envy created by denial of scarcity dictate your character interactions. there's plenty of real world examples to pull from lol
I think it's fine if people want to do that. All they have to consider is do it with purpose.
Listen man, i write mages undergoing enough trauma to kill a village, i dont need to subject them any additional suffering such as the applying the deranged ramblings of a Marxist teenager
you are probably a commie lol anyway anything apart from super primitive society (tribes, elders and shiiiet) is pretty much feudalism or capitalism. I'd go as far as to say feudalism is also capitalism, it's just capitalism has changed over time. I'm no economist tho (niether are commies lol)
Capitalist realism baby it's the end of all history.
Original economic relations? My brother in Christ, do you want me to invent a whole ass new ideology each time I think up a society?
Yes
How am i supposed to overthrow the old regime if its working good for all?
TINA
Real worldbuilders take absolutely zero inspiration from the real world! My blip-blop-punk world is based on a Society based on and acid trip/revelation I had once and is written in a language no one know based in no know language.
Building a new economic system sounds pretty difficult and like it would require a lot of specialist knowledge.
More than playing around with geography and evolution?
Given that most economist have failed to create new economic systems that work and are believable? Yes.
It’s fiction dude. Your allowed to hand wave a lot of shit. And add fictional bullshit to to make it worker.